Digimon World 2

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Digimon World does Mysterious Dungeon, but the result is none too impressive.

By David Smith

Normally, this review would begin with various comments on the originality (or lack thereof) of the Digimon property. However, time is short and other matters press, and so Digimon World 2 must receive a somewhat more businesslike assessment.

The first thing to recognize about Digimon World 2 is that it is in fact very little like the original Digimon World. The first game had much more in common with Bandai's last monster-raising phenomenon, Tamagotchi -- raising, nurturing, and looking after your little beasts took up the lion's share of your time. Digimon World 2, in contrast, features far more self-sufficient monsters, and presents more traditional RPG challenges: exploration, combat, character development, and so on.

But is this a good RPG? If you're of the Famitsoid coterie that considers the Mysterious Dungeon series one of God's finest gifts to videogaming, yes. If you're anyone else, probably not. Digimon World 2 doesn't take any remarkable advantage of the console it's appearing on, and in fact lacks any of the speed and portability that makes the handheld specimens of this genre so appealing.

Gameplay If you've played something like Chocobo's Dungeon 2 or Torneko: The Last Hope (or Nethack, for that matter), Digimon World 2's structure should be fairly familiar to you. As an aspiring Digimon Tamer, you travel the world in your Digi-Beetle and adventure through simple dungeons, subduing wild Digimon and ending their depredations. You begin the game with a single Digimon, but as you progress you can find and tame more monsters, trade them, and merge them. It's also possible to upgrade and customize your Digi-Beetle with better defense and support capabilities.

There's a certain amount of plot and quest structure that arises as the game progresses, but the vast majority of the game consists of wandering through the dungeons and fighting other Digimon. Fighting a lot. If you want to watch middling-quality 3D monster models wave at each other and fall over amid mostly black backgrounds, this is the game for you, because there's a LOT of that sort of thing in Digimon World 2. There's close to 30 dungeon quests, plus a gigantic bonus dungeon, and yowza, but do they get dull after a while. Progression through the dungeons is limited by your Beetle's slow pace and limited energy (get careless and run out of movement power and you're kicked back to the beginning of the quest), and the game eventually becomes ridiculously hard in the later levels. Unless you've got an awful lot of patience for the rigors of Digimon taming, you're likely to grow a little bored.

Graphics Digimon World 2 uses a mix of realtime and pre-rendered backgrounds, populated almost entirely with 3D characters. The game's no technical marvel, but here and there it's given a hand up by the bright cartoon colors -- there are lots of bright blues and greens and oranges and yellows, sort of like a slightly lightened sentai show.

The battles and dungeons have very lackluster graphics, though. Many of the series' less attractive monster designs aren't helped by the transition to 3D, and the dungeons would probably look better if Bandai had sacked the polygons and made everything isometric 2D -- it would have been in higher resolution that way.

Sound Not much to speak of in this category. The music is catchy, but that's about all, and the sound effects offer little aside from the 32-bit equivalent of bleeps and bloops. Many monsters have some rather amusing voice-like sound clips that accompany their attacks, though, which are at least good for the occasional chuckle (like the monsters' shouts in Persona 2).

The Verdict

This is still essentially a dull dungeon crawl, though. Torneko is a better specimen of the genre on PlayStation, and there are dozens of better specimens of the genre available for free download all over the net. Digimon's monster collecting and breeding elements set it apart, but its slow pace and repetitive structure steal what appeal that may have for those who aren't die-hard Digimon fans (assuming such people exist at all). On that note, pardon me while I go play some Nethack.